by Kelly Huston

Created on: October 26, 2008

Should teachers be held accountable for low student test scores? Of course they should! My initial reaction to this question was that students are responsible for learning the material assigned and if their lack of studying earns them a low test grade, then that is a problem they will have to deal with; upon a little more thought it seemed clear that the majority of blame should fall upon the teacher's shoulders. The reasoning for this is described in one word: technique.

A teacher's job is to make sure students understand and feel comfortable with the material they are being taught. Most people might say that the teacher gives an opportunity for learning, and if the student does not take that opportunity and run with it, that is the students own issue to deal with. This is not the case. If a teacher is truly doing his or her job, they will not only teach, but teach in such a way that all of the students will be drawn in.

If asked, a majority of students would most likely say that they would prefer various activities involving movement rather than a worksheet on any day. However, it is probably safe to assume that not all teachers ask students how they would like to learn. If students learn best through connecting the lesson to a real world situation, then that is what needs to happen, but too often students are handed worksheets with little to no explanation, and a very boring explanation at that. When a class as a whole does not understand, you cannot expect them as a whole to do well.

When the whole class has bad grades on a test, something is wrong, and it is not a lack of effort from the pupils. If it were a few bad grades, fine. Those students did not study the night before and always sleep in class. But too often teachers blame a whole class for bad grades and are too stubborn to change their methods of teaching. Did they ever stop and think to change it up every once in a while? And if it comes right down to it, the few students who were metaphorically sleeping earlier in this piece, should not be sleeping in class with the teachers leniency anyway!

If every student cannot help but pay attention, all students will interact together and want to learn. If they all want to learn, they will all understand well enough to score decent on a test. Once again, if students are not scoring high on test scores, teachers should be called upon to be more creative in the classroom.

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